Sasja Beslik comments on the climate deal

On Saturday night the announcement came – we have a new global climate deal. What does this mean for the financial sector and Nordea’s work with responsible investments? We asked Nordea’s head of Responsible Investments Sasja Beslik, who was in Paris during the climate conference.

Sasja, can you describe what the deal means for you as a responsible investor?

- The global economy will require an estimated USD 89 trillion in infrastructure investments in cities, energy and land-use over the next 15 years. Ensuring that these investments are guided away from climate destructive activities towards low carbon activities is critical to addressing this challenge, Sasja says and continues:

- This means that we continuously need to evaluate how we can increase our investments in companies part of the solution and avoid investments in sectors that now after Paris will become more of a liability, for instance heavy fossil sectors. The initiative announced by the Financial Stability Board at the climate conference also means that the pressure on all companies to disclose their exposure to climate change risks is set to intensify.

How is Nordea’s work with responsible investments affected by the deal?

- We will intensify our work of identifying companies that are handling environmental, social and governance aspects in a good way. It will not only be about fossil fuels. We will rather have to focus on finding companies with a sustainable business model. We have seen the demand of responsible investment products increase the last years and it will most likely continue to do so, so offering really good products to our customers will also be a focus area.